The present invention relates to improvements in methods of and in apparatus for manipulating parallelepiped packs of cigarettes or other smokers' products, and more particularly to improvements in methods of and in apparatus for confining successive finished packs in converted blanks of wrapping material such as cellophane foil and the like. Still more particularly, the invention relates to improvements in methods of and in apparatus for manipulating finished packs of cigarettes and the like in a packing machine, e.g., in a machine known as film wrapper C 90 which is distributed by the assignee of the present application and serves to confine individual soft packs or hinged lid packs in light-transmitting outer envelopes made of cellophane or the like.
As a rule, a cigarette pack includes at least one inner envelope or wrapper which is made of paper, light-weight cardboard or metallic foil and directly surrounds an array of, for example, twenty cigarettes, and an outer envelope which is normally a converted blank of cellophane foil and surrounds the inner envelope. Such outer envelope can be provided with a customary tear strip to facilitate access to the inner envelope and its contents. The inner envelope includes flaps, tucks, panels and like configurations which are folded over each other and are bonded to one another by layers or films of a suitable adhesive. Reference may be had, for example, to commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 4,999,967 granted Mar. 19, 1991 to Hoffmann for “APPARATUS FOR DRAPING PACKETS INTO BLANKS OF WRAPPING MATERIAL”.
A drawback of presently known methods of and apparatus for confining cigarete packs or the like in wrappers of cellulose foil or the like is that the preparation of packs for draping into blanks necessitates the provision of long paths for the transport of successive finished packs from the machine which turns out such packs to the apparatus which converts blanks into outer envelopes surrounding the packs. The primary reason for the utilization of an elongated path for the transport of packs from the packing machine to the machine or apparatus which provides such packs with outer envelopes is that the adhesive which is to bond overlapping portions of inner envelopes of the packs to each other must set completely prior to the application of outer envelopes; otherwise, the inner envelope is likely to open (e.g., an overlapping flap is likely to become separated from the adjacent (overlapped) flap, tuck or panel upon completion of the outer envelope). The overlapping flaps are likely to become separated from the adjacent portions of the inner envelope at the sides and/or at the bottom of a finished pack which includes an array of cigarettes or the like (e.g., in the so-called quincunx formation) and at least one inner envelope.
Attempts to overcome the afore discussed problems also include the utilization of rapidly or more rapidly setting adhesive substances, e.g., of hot melts in lieu of and/or in addition to the more reliable (stronger) cold setting adhesive which requires a longer period of time to set and to thus reliably bond flaps, tucks, panels and/or otherwise configurated portions of inner envelopes to each other. Furthermore, the provision of sources of several different adhesives and of means for applying such plural adhesives to selected portions of the inner envelopes contributes to the bulk, initial cost and maintenance cost of machines which are designed to provide arrays of cigarettes or the like with one or more inner envelopes.